Magnificat

December 8, 2019

“And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.

For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, And holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him From generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, And the rich He has sent away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, In remembrance of His mercy, As He spoke to our fathers, To Abraham and to his seed forever.””

Luke 1:46-55 NKJV

Worship and praise should never be predicated upon our experiences. Too often, when things are going well for us, praise and thanksgiving flow freely from our lips, but when life turns against us, we turn to grumbling. In this scripture, Mary isn’t depending only upon what the angel had announced. If we pay close attention to the verb tenses, we find that Mary looked to the past—the favor God had shown her in choosing her to give birth to the Messiah, but she also looked to the future. She speaks of it as though it had already happened. “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud; he has put down the mighty; he has exalted the lowly...etc. There is nothing to indicate any of that had actually happened. Even today, we look in vain for evidence that these things have already occurred. Mary however, looked to what she knew God had already accomplished as the foundation for her confidence that what he promised for the future was as good as done.

I read a quote recently: “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” Replace ‘genius’ with ‘faith,’ and it becomes even more true. In Mary’s heart, the promise was as good as the accomplishment. 

Because she had experienced great things from God that caused her to trust in even greater things, her “spirit has rejoiced in God [her] Savior.” Her spirit’s rejoicing had already begun, and was continuing to that moment. And because her spirit was rejoicing, her soul could magnify the Lord. The faith within her enabled her soul (the totality of who she was) to magnify God, i.e. to enlarge his reputation before the world. 

It is always thus. We experience the work of God that enables us to trust so completely in his promises that they are as good as done, which results in living in such a way that God is more readily seen by those around us. This scripture challenges me to take the work of God that I have seen and use it as a springboard to believe more completely that what he has promised is as good as accomplished even if I cannot see it with my eyes. That’s not easy, but it is the challenge of Mary’s Magnificat to me.